Best Crawlbase Alternatives in 2026 (Free & Paid Compared)

Crawlbase has been around long enough (as ProxyCrawl, then Crawlbase since 2021) to have grown into several products under one account: a Crawling API that returns pages synchronously, an Enterprise Crawler that fetches asynchronously and writes into Cloud Storage, a Smart AI Proxy endpoint, screenshot capture, and more recently a Web MCP Server for AI agents. Its pricing page is clear that proxies and anti-bot handling are part of every request rather than a separate bill, and that only successful requests count. The reason to read an alternatives guide is that most teams use one slice of that bundle, and each slice has a competitor built specifically for it.

Is Crawlbase actually the wrong tool?

Stay with Crawlbase if you rely on the crawl-and-store loop: you point the Crawler at URLs, results land in Crawlbase's storage, and you read them back on your schedule. That is a real convenience no single-endpoint API replicates. Look at alternatives when:

• You only use the Crawling API. Then you are paying bundle prices ($99 minimum subscription, or $3 per 1,000 on pay-as-you-go at low volume) for a fetch that ZenRows sells from $16 and Scrape.do from $29, both with recurring free tiers.
• Rendering is most of your traffic. Doubling credits for JavaScript is milder than ZenRows' 5x or ScrapingBee's 5x, but on a subscription it still halves your effective page count.
• Your targets are known platforms. Storing raw HTML for Amazon product pages or Google Maps listings and parsing it later is the long way round when an endpoint returns the fields directly.
• You want a free tier that renews. Crawlbase's 5,000 requests are one-time.
• Your crawler needs are heavier than the Crawler. Custom scheduling, dataset outputs, and prebuilt scrapers are Apify's whole product.

What to look for in a Crawlbase alternative

• Which slice do you use: synchronous fetch, async crawl-to-storage, or agent tooling? Pick the alternative for that slice, not for the bundle.
• Rendering cost: Crawlbase 2x, ZenRows 5x, ScrapingBee 5x, Scrape.do varies by proxy class, Crawlora none (priced into the endpoint).
• Free tier: one-time (Crawlbase 5,000 requests, ScrapingBee 1,000 credits) or recurring (ZenRows 5,000 credits, Scrape.do 1,000 calls, Crawlora 2,000 credits)?
• Storage: do you need the vendor to hold results, or do you already have a bucket and a queue?
• Output: HTML you parse, or documented JSON per endpoint?
• Pay-on-success: Crawlbase, ZenRows, Scrape.do and Crawlora all bill only successful responses.

The best Crawlbase alternatives in 2026

1. Crawlora — skip the store-then-parse step for known platforms

The Crawlbase pattern for a platform like Amazon is: crawl the product pages, store the HTML, parse it later, re-parse when Amazon changes its markup. A structured platform API collapses that into one call that returns the fields. Amazon, Google Maps, Bing Search, Zillow, TikTok and the rest of the catalog each have documented endpoints with a fixed credit weight; proxies, rendering and retries are behind the endpoint and billed only on success. If you also want agent access, the same key works with Crawlora's hosted MCP server, which is the equivalent of Crawlbase's Web MCP Server without a process to run.

curl -s -G "https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1/bing/search" \
  -H "x-api-key: $CRAWLORA_API_KEY" \
  --data-urlencode "q=web scraping api" \
  --data-urlencode "country=us"

{
  "code": 200,
  "msg": "OK",
  "data": {
    "result": [
      { "position": 1, "title": "Example result", "url": "https://example.com/", "hostname": "example.com", "description": "Snippet text shown under the result." }
    ]
  }
}

When to choose it: your targets are named platforms and you would rather have rows than stored pages. See Crawlora vs Crawlbase. It does not offer generic crawl-to-storage; if that loop is what you need on arbitrary sites, look at Apify next.

2. Apify — the crawl-to-storage loop as a whole platform

If what you value in Crawlbase is the asynchronous Crawler plus Cloud Storage, Apify is the most direct alternative: thousands of prebuilt scrapers (Actors), scheduling, datasets and key-value stores, webhooks, and the option to run your own crawler code on its infrastructure. It is a bigger surface than Crawlbase's Crawler, with a marketplace attached. See Apify alternatives.

When to choose it: you want the vendor to run and store your crawls and you would use prebuilt scrapers rather than write your own.

3. ZenRows and Scrape.do — cheaper synchronous fetches with recurring free tiers

If you only call the Crawling API, two peers undercut the bundle at low volume. ZenRows gives 5,000 credits every month free and starts paid plans at $16 for 45,000 credits, with an explicit ladder (1 plain, 5 JS, 10 premium, 25 both; residential bandwidth 25,000 credits per GB). Scrape.do gives 1,000 successful calls a month free and $29 buys 250,000 credits with every feature unlocked. Both bill only successful responses. See ZenRows alternatives and Scrape.do alternatives.

When to choose them: you fetch pages synchronously, store them yourself, and want a lower floor than Crawlbase's $99 subscription or $3-per-1,000 entry rate.

4. ScrapingBee and Scrapfly — extraction on top of the fetch

ScrapingBee adds CSS extraction rules and a dedicated Google Search endpoint to a clearly documented credit table (1 / 5 / 10 / 25 / 75), from $19 for 75,000 credits, with a one-time 1,000-credit trial (see ScrapingBee alternatives). Scrapfly leads with anti-bot bypass and adds rule-based and LLM extraction (see Scrapfly alternatives).

When to choose them: you want fields rather than HTML from arbitrary pages but do not need a platform API's catalog.

5. Bright Data, Oxylabs, Zyte — enterprise proxy networks

Crawlbase's Smart AI Proxy is a convenience wrapper over rotating residential IPs. If proxies are your actual product requirement at scale, compare Bright Data, Oxylabs and Zyte; see Bright Data alternatives.

6. Crawlee, Scrapy — run the loop yourself

Crawlee and Scrapy plus an object store and a queue reproduce the crawl-and-store loop with no per-request fee. You take on proxies, browsers and anti-bot upkeep, which is exactly what Crawlbase's bundle was saving you; whether that trade is worth it depends on how defended your targets are.

Crawlbase's pricing model, in plain terms

• Pay-as-you-go: $3.00 per 1,000 requests for the first 1,000, stepping down to $0.02 per 1,000 beyond a billion requests.
• Subscriptions: Starter $99 for 200,000 credits; Scale $199 for 500,000; Scale $349 for 1,000,000; Growth $599 for 2,000,000.
• JavaScript rendering in a real browser doubles the credits for that request.
• Screenshots: 2 credits. Cloud Storage: 0.5 credits per stored item per month.
• Proxies and anti-bot handling are included in every request, never a separate bill.
• Only successful requests are billed. Trial: 5,000 requests, one-time, no card.

The storage line is the one people forget. At 0.5 credits per item per month, a million stored pages cost 500,000 credits a month before you fetch anything new, which is most of a $349 plan. If you keep results for long, price the storage separately from the crawl. Crawlora's model for supported platforms is one fixed credit weight per endpoint, billed only on success, and since the response is already structured there is nothing to store and re-parse.

Crawlbase vs Crawlora: feature by feature

How to choose

1. Name the slice you use. Fetch only: ZenRows or Scrape.do. Crawl-to-storage: Apify. Agent tooling on known platforms: Crawlora's MCP server.
2. If storage is a meaningful share of your credits, price a bucket you own against 0.5 credits per item per month.
3. Sort targets into known platforms and arbitrary URLs. Platforms go to a structured API; the rest stays generic.
4. If you need a free tier that renews, Crawlbase and ScrapingBee are the two here that do not offer one.
5. If your volume is very high and your targets lightly defended, price Crawlee or Scrapy plus a proxy provider honestly, including engineer time.

Known platforms, structured JSON, nothing to store and re-parse

Documented endpoints, normalized JSON, proxies and rendering behind the endpoint, billed only on success. 2,000 free credits a month, no card.

Try the PlaygroundCrawlora vs Crawlbase

Next steps

Check the platform catalog for your targets and the API docs for each endpoint's credit weight. For arbitrary URLs, the Free Web Scraper shows what a generic fetch returns as Markdown with no signup. If agents are the use case, the hosted MCP server exposes the same endpoints as tools.

Sources

Related reading

• Apify Alternatives — the crawl-to-storage platform compared in depth.
• ZenRows Alternatives — the cheapest recurring free tier among generic APIs.
• Scrape.do Alternatives — every feature on every tier.
• Is Web Scraping Legal in 2026? — the legal basics before you collect at scale.